Report

 December 2012

** Jointed Report **

The Project… 

The International Graduate Conference: 'Nachhaltigkeit and Empowerment. Latein-amerikanische Perspektiven auf Post-Rio+20' took place at the KlimaCampus, at the University of Hamburg, between the 22^nd and 25^th of November of this year. 

Gathering together more than 45 researches from Latin America, Europe and Asia, the conference offered a room for discussion about academic research, framed by an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives. During four days, Critical Geographers, Economists, Social Scientists, Environmentalists, Historians, Mathematicians and Architects discussed on the different temporal and spatial dimension, possibilities and impossibilities of linking a sustainable development with civic empowerment. The conference offered a platform for students, intellectuals and activists: in short, a transnational civic society to present the state of the art in their research on singular or compared case studies, prognoses or meta-analyses. It was also a meeting point for further networking.

The conference was organized by Tania Mancheno and Miguel Rodríguez López, who in their research have approached the topic of sustainability from a political and an economic perspective, respectively.

Working on the subject of the postcolonial nation, in her PhD, Tania Mancheno deals for alternative approaches to the inevitable historical relationship between decolonialization and nationalization in the case of Ecuador. The question of natural resources, of land and land-ownership measures is here as central as the question about ethnicity, gender and race. 
Miguel Rodríguez López is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Globalisation and Governance and KlimaCampus (University of Hamburg). His areas of research encompass financial market institutions, political science and quantitative methods. He is currently researching cross-national comparisons of institutional factors and the economic actions of companies within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. 

Together with Miguel Rodriguez Lopez, Tania Mancheno proposed the conference to the Kompetenzzentrum Nachhaltige Universität as a project to be considered for a grant. We also counted with the kindly support of Centre for Globalisation and Governance and the KlimaCampus (University of Hamburg), where Miguel Rodriguez works as a post-doc.

The conference was conceived as a room for egalitarian discussion. As an alternative for frontal lectures, a round table invited all the participants to join the discussion. No plastic bottles nor plastic dishes were used. Paper was used scarcely.       
For the conference there were two transatlantic flights, which were compensated by paying carbon-emissions. Our Key-Notes, Juanita Castaño and Gian Carlo Delgado Ramos were participating the most of the time at the conference.

The Course of Presentations…

M.A. Juanita Castaño, former head of the UNDP department in New York, managed in-between her diplomatic travels to join us during the conference. In her Opening Talk, Juanita Castaño offered a historical reconstruction of the changes in environmental policies in and from the Latin American region. She gave a valuable overview on the institutional and organizational landscape, and the diplomatic culture, in which the sustainable future of the planet is being discussed. Addressing topics such as ‘the right to developed vs. the right to pollute’, the need of a more egalitarian technological transfer and the ethical requirement of post-growth visions at the individual scale. Castaño identified several paradoxes composing the agenda for a sustainable regional and global future. Among these paradoxes one of the most urgent is build by the fact that the ecological boundaries of the planet are the empirical evidence that the current growth patters are causing fatal damages. Yet, governments, policy-makers and international institutions have still not shown the willingness of a paradigmatic change in production and exploitation of natural resources. This situation is exemplified by the car industry, which in many cases is even sustained through state subventions as a way of protecting important national interests.  Juanita underlined that the participation of civil society is necessary to give the debate on sustainability/climate change the well-earned attention of involved policy makers.

The question of the ecological boundaries was also addressed by Dr. Gian Carlo Delgado, who came from Mexico City, where he works and teaches at the UNAM, for joining our conference. In his deeply analytical talk, Gian Carlo offered a prognostic on the usages of natural resources and the impossibilities of continuing, not to say to increase, the patterns of consumption, which are being followed today, especially by the northern countries of the world. Delgado also gave an overview of the actual resource conflicts in Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, showing through a collective work of researches and activist a cartography, which gives account of the huge number of violent environmental situations around Latin American countries. As a way to counteract this development, Delgado gave a brief introduction on the alternative economical approaches, which includes bio-economics, entropy law, ecological economics, while at the same time criticizing, conceptions such as eco-efficiency, green economy and de-growth argumentations. “How many resources would it take to create a sustainable future?”, “Is prosperity without growth possible?” addressing these among other questions, Delgado made emphasis in the need for new economic models, which include the degradation and the limits of natural resources, the change on the Menschenbild, or the economic and interest-driven model of the individual and in the need to think nature, as the common good of humanity. This epistemological change, involves a post-capitalistic approach to society and participative variants on how to define social development. Nonetheless, Delgado also recognizes, that those changes may only take place, once the Latin American states are strong enough to have control and sovereignty over their natural resources. 

Further, the program of the conference consisted in V Panels, each consisting of three or four presentations from students. The first one the local and the global dimensions of sustainability through empowerment: transsubjectivities, transnational ecologies, transnational movements treated controversial processes of spacing environmental territories. Ecological reserves, ‘ejidos’ - or communal land tenure-, new forms of privatization of space, regulation, planning and governance of space through the international and national sustainability discourses were subjected to discussion. Who protects what and where? And who are hereby empowered and disempowered? Karl-Heinz Gaudry treated these questions on the case of Maya indigenous and non-indigenous minorities in the frontier between Mexico and Guatemala. He demonstrated that the historic dimension is important to understand recent changes and the motivation behind the actions of stakeholders, who in this case-study reflect a long history of constructing territorial belonging (refering to discourses of scarcity, development and/or biological diversity). David Vollrath addressed them in relation to Ecuadorian and Bolivian peasants’ initiatives of resource governance and Lucas de Souza Martins treated these questions in a polemic presentation on the disfunctionalities of REDD+ in Tembé-Tenetehara, in the province of Pará, one of the most violent regions in Brazil.

The second panel thinking the transnationality of national environment of/through water treated this natural resource in three different cases, which showed from different approaches how water operates not only as good, but also as a social status, creating cohesion and division between peoples, so as a different positioning in society depending on the access, that people may or may not have. Also new subjectivities and identities may evolve through the usages and disuses of water. Fernando Campos Medina offered a presentation addressing these issues in the Chilean Atacama dessert region. For Fernando, ecological conflicts are actually social conflicts. The access and use of water is socially embeded and related to other aspects like gender, ethnicity and imaginaries of belonging. Daniela García talked about the (im)possibilities of hydroelectric energy supplies in Costa Rica and treated the questions of energy autarchy or self-sufficiency. Daniela showed that alternatives to energy production are not being considered due to the interests in the already existing sectors. Martha Bolivar presented her preliminary research project on one of the most water-rich regions in Colombia, las cuencas, closed to the frontier to Panama, and her interest in analysing the local water management culture. 

The third panel (post)colonial narratives in geographical (trans-)national spaces offered a different perspective on the subject of the conference “Nachhaltigkeit and Empowerment” as it had been treated so far. The questions on spatialities and natural resources were complemented by the question of language’s dynamics. How to speak about ‘the other’? How do the discourses to protect the ‘other’ are being framed, and is it possible to overcome the differences among languages and voices searching for a sustainable development? And most important: what are the processes of translation involved? Narratives, imaginaries, cartographies and categories of gender were submitted in this panel to deconstruction. From a historical perspective, Kevin Niebauer presented a narrative on transcontinental environmental justice during the 80’s. Analysing the writings of José Lutzenberger, he reconstructs several imaginaries on the Brazilian Amazonía and the terminology used for creating international awareness of the need to protect and to care. Julia Ziesche also analysed the vocabulary and genderized imaginaries and subjectivities that are created around REDD, such as carbon ‘hunters’, ‘dealers’ and new forms of colonialism through environmental discourses. Martin David described a positive link of sustainability and empowerment in the case of a peasant’s community in La Paz, Bolivia in which the community has used the global media, in order to spread knowledge about land usage and sustainable agriculture. Martin made the importance to involve and understand local realities as an essential part of the research very clear and of creating solutions together with local people. Continuing on the Bolivian case, Anna Kajser, offered a description of the figure of Evo Morales and the representations and miss-representations of the indigenous movements that are associated with him. Here, the concept of the pachamama, a key-concept in Morales’ discourse, played a central role in including sustainability within a government’s agenda. However, as the presentations shown the institutionalization of concepts, do not necessarily mean a radical change in the way of government. Moreover, a de-politicization process of these concepts may also take place.  

We met on Saturday for the forth panel of the conference entitled: (re)inventing cooperation beyond the North-South dichotomy. Rather oriented towards policy analysis, this panel allowed discussing practical solutions for sustainability. Daniele Vieira gave an introduction about the bioethanol industry in Brazil outlining the historical context, the main players and some important figures involved in the climate change debate. Julia Haselberger gave a presentation on the cooperation work of CELA, at the university level between Germany and Central American Universities and Miguel Rodriguez Lopez, co-organizer of the conference, offered the work of an intersdisciplinary Clisap doctoral and postdoctoral researchers about an economical model for analyzing the behavior of enterprises and states in dealing with the management of the sustentability.

The last panel transnational ecological problems and transnational resistances treated the crucial and, at the same time, currently neglected subject of environmental injustices and violence. Felipe Milanez presented his interests in hermeneutical analysis on the (em)body of the environmentalist. Philipp Altmann offered an interpretation of the developments of indigenous’ language in Ecuador and the appropriations and misappropriations of the vocabulary that the political leadership’s class have undermined, as in the case of ‘buen vivir’ or sumak kawsay’. Philip Bedall gave a presentation about non-governmental organizations and social movements in international climate politics, in which he discussed if those actors could be a driving force pushing the deadlocked negotiations forward. Soledad Granada presented her comparative work on peace-communities in Colombia through the production of alternative agricultural products.

Closing up…

Dealing with the questions: (i) Does climate change and the quest for sustainable development bring along civil disobedience? (ii) How do social groups and movements have been shaped by climate change and the need for sustainability? Have they been empowered or rather weakened by environmental degradation? (iii) What is the political economy of the environmental social movements’ agendas? How feasible are these alternative agendas to be translated into the policy process? (v) Which kind of alternative mechanisms of political and scientific global cooperation may counteract the effects of climate change from a sustainable perspective?

We met during four days to discuss the possibilities of thinking a better future within the academy and beyond. Sustainability, as well as Nachhaltigkeit and desarrollo sustentable are not only about a fairer manipulation with resources. It is also about human relationships, relationships of knowledge production, knowledge legitimation and plurality of voices.

For a first meeting, the plurality was great. We hope to meet again soon, and that there will be even more of us who are willing to change the way in which the global environmental history has so far been written.